


Achilles Come Down

by mikripetra



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Character Study, Chronic Illness, Depression, Domestic Avengers, Established Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Fluff, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Self-Esteem Issues, Song: Achilles Come Down (Gang of Youths), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, for like one scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:47:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29601279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikripetra/pseuds/mikripetra
Summary: “What are you doing?”Bucky shrugged good-naturedly. “Hopefully, getting you to come back to bed with me. I’m not looking forward to being a stain on the pavement, I’ve gotta say.”Steve jolted upright. “What?”Bucky met his eyes, his face full of determination, affection, and utterly without fear. “You didn’t think I was gonna let you jump alone, did you?”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 19
Kudos: 135





	Achilles Come Down

**Author's Note:**

> The first time I heard the song "Achilles Come Down," I couldn't help but think of Steve and Bucky. Their similarities to Achilles and Patroclus were absolutely stunning to me, and I knew I had to get this down on paper.
> 
> Be warned, there is discussion of suicidality and depression throughout this story, but I saturated it in love, domestic fluff, and philosophizing on the meaning of life.

_Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down_

_Won't you get up off, get up off the roof?_

_The self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken_

_Remember the pact of our youth_

_Where you go, I'm going, so jump, and I'm jumping_

_Since there is no me without you_

_Soldier on, Achilles, Achilles, come down_

_Won't you get up off, get up off the roof?_

It took Steve a very long time to die.

He knew he was done for when he stopped shivering. The impact of the plane into the ocean hadn’t killed him, obviously, so he was stuck there, impaled with shrapnel seven ways to Sunday, waiting for the freezing water to rise above his head.

His mother was a nurse, after all. Hypothermia only got really bad once you started feeling hot, taking your clothes off to try and cool down. Something inside you had broken, at that point, usually forever.Even Erskine’s serum couldn’t save him from some things.

Steve tried to feel sad, angry, _anything,_ about the fact that he was going to die. But strangely, the only thing that came to mind was decade-old memory, rubbed soft around the edges.

* * *

“You gonna jump?”

Steve’s eyes opened.

Bucky’s voice was measured, even. He might have been asking Steve if he wanted eggs for breakfast.

“I don’t know,” Steve answered, wincing at the sound of his raw, hoarse voice.

Bucky sighed. He ambled toward where Steve was sitting, feet dangled over the edge of the roof of their half-decayed tenement building.

“Alright,” Bucky said, with the patience of someone who’d been dealing with Steve for years at this point, “guess I’ll just join you, then.”

Bucky threw his weight down on the ledge next to Steve, their thighs pressed together, a warm contrast to the freezing roof.

Steve blinked at him.

Bucky reached in his coat pocket, pulling his pack of cigarettes. He lit one, cupping his hand around the tiny flame.

“You want one?” Bucky asked, his words made of smoke.

“What are you-” Steve croaked. “What are you doing?”

Bucky shrugged good-naturedly. “Hopefully, getting you to come back to bed with me. I’m not looking forward to being a stain on the pavement, I’ve gotta say.”

Steve jolted upright. _“What?”_

Bucky met his eyes, his face full of determination, affection, and utterly without fear. “You didn’t think I was gonna let you jump alone, did you?”

Steve was shaking his head before Bucky had even finished speaking. “Bucky, you can’t. You’re too important.”

Bucky laughed, his eyes crinkling, lip curled in indulgence. “Sure, punk.”

“You don’t-” Steve huffed, facing forward, bringing his knees to his too-thin chest. “You don’t know what it’s like, Buck. I can only take so much.”

“And this is where you stop?” Bucky asked, soft.

Steve barked out a laugh, hiding his face in his hands as he began to sob. From an outsider’s perspective, it must seem like an awfully dumb reason to kill himself. It wasn’t like anything had changed. He was still the same old Steve. Riddled with illness, constantly struggling, waiting for the day when he could finally stop suffering.

He didn’t know why he’d chosen tonight. It had just become too much of the same old thing.

“I love you,” whispered Bucky, “and your ma loves you, and mine, and Becca, and I know for a fact that you make people’s lives better whenever you talk to them. You make mine better every minute. You and me, we’re it. Where you go, I’m going, too. I know how you’d feel if I died, because it’s exactly how _I’d_ feel, Stevie.”

Steve couldn’t stop crying. He didn’t deserve this, any of it. He could feel how much Bucky loved him, and it was overwhelming.

Bucky let out a long exhale.

“So,” Bucky began, “we’re gonna take a trip, you and me. Which way are we going?”

Steve grabbed Bucky’s lapels and threw himself at Bucky’s chest, tears and snot and all kinds of junk messing up Bucky’s shirt.

“I want to go back to bed,” Steve mumbled into Bucky’s neck. “With you.”

Gently, Bucky kissed the top of his head. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

* * *

Up to his neck in ice-water, Steve began to laugh.

How ironic was it, that Bucky was the one to fall from his death?

Bucky had been right about one thing, all those years ago. Where one of them went, the other had to follow.

If Bucky had been alive, today, he would’ve grabbed the comm from Peggy and screamed in it until his voice went hoarse. He would’ve talked Steve out of it, convinced him to find another way that didn’t end in him dead.

But Bucky wasn’t there to convince him of anything. Steve had to take the wheel, now. And quite calmly, he’d made his decision.

When he was steering the plane down into the water, he thought about the days he spent traveling with the showgirls, socking Hitler in the jaw every Wednesday and Friday at 3:00, a dancing monkey without a soul, without humanity, who still felt a twinge of joy whenever civilians cheered for the farce that was Captain America. He’d tried to make his life have meaning. He’d saved Bucky only to lose him again, this time to his own futility.

As the water started to rise above his chin, Steve wasn’t afraid. He’d see Bucky again, once he was dead. That was how they were supposed to be. Together.

* * *

“This is amazing.”

Tony paused in his stride, one eyebrow raised. Captain America himself was in the living room, sitting three inches away from the TV screen, staring without blinking.

“Careful, Cap,” Tony drawled. “Might catch your death over there. Too much exposure to future tech isn’t good for a forties boy.”

Shockingly, Cap smiled.

“I might have a lot to say about social media,” said Cap, “but this is absolutely beautiful.”

Tony wandered over, morbid curioisity taking control. That was the most Tony had heard from the man that wasn’t a sneered remark or a battle plan since they’d met. The Capsicle was watching _Tangled_ , of all things, absolutely mesmerized at the sight of Rapunzel’s hair starting to glow as she sang.

“Didn’t peg you as a princess kind of guy, Cap.”

The Captain scoffed. “I don’t know what kind of propaganda about me they’ve been teaching in schools, but way before I was any kind of soldier, I was an artist.”

Tony’s lips twitched. “Have you ever seen Snow White?”

“Of course,” he answered. “Me and B- uh, I saw it in the theaters, when it came out. They had to draw every frame by hand, back then. And it was still as gorgeous as anything. But this is really something else.”

“You really don’t mind?” Tony found himself asking.

“Mind what?” Cap asked, eyes not leaving the screen.

“Technology, I mean. How it’s kind of, you know, everywhere, nowadays. I thought you might feel better staying away from it. As much as possible, anyway.”

Cap’s eyebrows narrowed. He reached for the remote and paused the movie before turning to face Tony, blue eyes startlingly focused and piercing. Tony squirmed a bit.

“No,” he said, softly. “I like the technology, Tony. I think it’s neat. And I think what you create down in that lab of yours is almost as great as what Mr. Disney came up with.”

Tony laughed nervously. “ _Almost_ as great? Sounds like I’ve got some work to do, Cap.”

Tony turned, ready to bolt back to his workshop, when he felt a gentle hand on his arm.

“Hey,” Cap said. “Do you think you could-”

Tony braced himself. Nothing good ever followed those words. He had his watch strapped to his left wrist, JARVIS could come up with an event he “needed” to attend at a moment’s notice, if he could just subtly reach for the-

“-call me Steve?”

Tony’s eyes widened.

“Uh,” he began, “sure?”

The ghost of a smile flitted across Steve’s lips. “You know, you’re a swell guy, Tony.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Tony said with a grin, completely reflexively.

Instead of getting angry and superior, Steve-

Steve _grinned._

“Sure thing,” Steve said, turning back to his movie.

Hours later, elbows deep in the chassis of his latest suit, Tony thought about him. He’d had a million questions and presupposed answers since the minute the guy came out of the ice, but right now, there was just one.

_Has anyone called him by his first name since World War II?_

* * *

“What are you doing?”

Steve laughed into his glass before taking another swallow of the liquid that somehow tasted like gasoline and cough syrup and an egg cream all at the same time.

“Getting drunk,” he said, vaguely noticing how high his voice sounded. “Thor brought me some sort of Asgardian mega-super-scotch that actually works on me. Great guy, Thor.”

He went in for another sip, but found the glass missing from his hand. Natasha inspected it, sniffing it with a grimace, before placing it out of reach. Steve could’ve just gotten up and grabbed it, of course, but he didn’t trust his legs to hold him just now.

“You ever lose someone?” he asked. “Someone you- and I mean _really_ loved? Somebody who was half of your soul?”

Natasha was quiet for a long time.

“When Clint was under Loki’s control,” she began, “I thought I was going to have to kill him. We made a deal, the two of us, that if either of us were to become irreconcilably compromised, the other would end it.”

“Could you have done it?” Steve whispered.

“Yes,” Natasha answered, without hesitation. “If it came to that, it wouldn’t have been on me. It would have been an act of mercy.”

“But when he was- when he was evil,” Steve managed to string together, “you felt like you were gone, too. Didn’t you?”

Natasha sat next to him on the couch, lithe limbs stretched out in front of her. “I’m not like you, Steve. Your experiences are different. You feel things very strongly, and if you lost someone, I can’t imagine that it was easy.”

Steve stared at the carpet. “It was my fault.”

“Was it?” Natasha asked.

This. This was why he liked her. Nobody else would have asked him that question. They would’ve brushed him off, or lied to try and make him feel better.

“He was going to die, and I saved him. But then because of that, he- he fell. I could’ve done something. I could’ve grabbed him before he could fall.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked, voice devoid of any judgement. No condemnation, but no sympathy, either.

“He saved me so many times, Natasha,” he whispered. “And when it came down to it, I couldn’t save him.”

Natasha rose from the couch and strode away, feet soundless on the floor. Steve rubbed at his eyes. He didn’t blame her, of course. He’d walk away from himself, if he had the choice.

His sense of time was too warped from the alcohol to really tell, but after a few minutes, a hot cup was being pressed into his hands.

“Careful,” said Natasha. “You’ll drop it.”

He gazed at the china, white with a faux lace pattern around the rim. He felt like crying, it was so pretty.

“This is a really nice cup,” he choked out, voice filled with emotion.

His gaze wandered over to Natasha’s face, and startlingly, she was smiling. He couldn’t _not_ smile, too.

A blanket was being draped around his shoulders, somehow.

“No alcohol in this, I’m afraid. Just black tea with lemon and sugar. I swear by it.”

Steve took a sip. He couldn’t really taste it, to be honest, but it was very warm, and he was so cold.

“Thank you, Natasha.”

“I don’t know how much of this you’ll remember in the morning,” Natasha began, “but I want to tell you this now. I don’t think there is any reason for living. All of us were created by accident, and we’ll die by accident, too. That’s why _we,_ our minds, matter. You need to find a reason to keep going, and fight for it.”

“I had a reason,” answered Steve. “He died today. Seventy-one years ago.”

“You could see that as a reason to die,” she reasoned, “but you could also see it as a reason to live. Use the pain you feel, and fight for something that matters.”

* * *

When Sam brought him to a Vietnamese restaurant, he felt the best that he’d felt since getting defrosted.

He still felt horrible, obviously. But he was used to that by now.

“Uh,” Steve said, squinting at the menu, “isn’t that a cuss word?”

Sam leaned over to see what he was looking at, and laughed out loud.

“Man, it’s _cha-_ ca. It’s fried fish with lots of seasoning.”

Steve hummed in appreciation. “Sounds much better than what I was thinking of.”

Sam started laughing so hard that he snorted, _loud._

Steve found himself smiling, too, until his mind fed him a flash of someone else, laughing like he was going to die once he stopped.

“Hey.”

Steve looked up. Sam wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Where’d you go?”

“When you-” And Steve’s voice sounded _horrible,_ “when you think of Riley, what do you do?”

Sam regarded him from across the table, posture relaxed and expression carefully neutral. “Sometimes, it’s about letting myself be happy. Letting myself laugh at good memories, and letting myself enjoy my life now. And sometimes I go out and I kick ass, like we always used to do together. Both of those are what I know he’d want me to be doing.”

“Yeah,” Steve croaked out.

Sam smiled at him, bittersweet. “Yeah.”

* * *

And then Bucky is found, and Steve finds himself unable to speak, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but go to him, _right now._

* * *

Steve isn’t as strong as Natasha.

If Bucky hadn’t started to remember, if he’d stayed the Winter Soldier for the rest of his natural life, Steve would never have been able to kill him. At least, not _just_ him.

After months of going nowhere, when Bucky looks across the room and asks, paper-thin, “ _Stevie?”_ Steve can’t be blamed for falling to his knees.

* * *

“I don’t know how to do it,” Bucky said, one night.

“Do what?” Steve asked.

“Keep going. I don’t- I can’t deserve it, after everything I’ve done.”

The sun had long-since set, and the dim light in their apartment was quiet and forgiving.

Steve’s muscles were locked in place for a moment, unable to react. But he drew on his greatest strength, his memories of Bucky, and walked forward. He took Bucky’s scarred, shaking hands in his own, the metal and flesh alike, and looked until Bucky met his gaze.

“You and me,” Steve began, “we’re going to take a trip. Which way are we going?”

It took Bucky a second to get it. And Steve didn’t know if he was remembering, too, or if he was just perceptive enough to understand what Steve meant.

“Stevie, _no.”_

Steve shrugs, unrepentant. “You feel like you don’t deserve to be alive anymore? Well, tough. I can’t live without you. So you need to make a decision.”

“How could you say something like that?” Bucky asked, betrayed. “You’re _important._ You do good. Everyone looks up to you.”

Steve couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of this all. “There’s so much good you can do with your life, now, Buck. So many people’s lives you can change. And if you don’t want to do any of that, if you want to be- to be a kept man, or something, and kiss me on the cheek when I come home from missions and have dinner in the oven, I’ll be happy with that, too.”

That got a smile out of Bucky, thank God.

Steve cupped Bucky’s face in one hand, keeping the fingers of his other hand laced with Bucky’s metal ones. Startlingly, Bucky’s skin was cold, and Steve, by contrast, felt so, so warm.

“There are a lot of people who care about you, Bucky,” Steve whispered. “No one more than me. We’re both kind of fucked up, I’m not gonna lie. But if anyone can do this, we can. Together.”

Bucky lifts his arm to place his hand over Steve’s hand on his face, staring at him in utter adoration. “You make me want to try, Stevie.”

“You’re the only reason I’m able to try.”

Steve maneuvered them around until he was sitting in Bucky’s lap, his arms around his shoulders.

“I love you,” Steve breathed into his hair.

Bucky’s arms wrapped around Steve’s back, just as tight. He murmured something in Russian, and despite Natasha’s lessons, Steve couldn’t quite catch it. But that’s alright. Steve knew what he meant.

_ Throw yourself into the unknown _

_ With pace and a fury defiant _

_ Clothe yourself in beauty untold _

_ And see life as a means to a triumph _

_ Today of all days, see _

_ How the most dangerous thing is to love _

_ How you will heal and you'll rise above _

_ Crowned by an overture bold and beyond _

_ Ah, it's more courageous to overcome... _

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think? 
> 
> I implore you, PLEASE listen to the song "Achilles Come Down" if you haven't already. A lot of the lines, and all of the concepts of this story are lifted from that song. It's a true masterpiece. And when you listen, don't forget to look up the translations of the French portions! They have a lot of meaning that's related heavily to this story.


End file.
